Hong Kong hedge fund analyst declares semi-retirement aged 35 after practicing FIRE
If you're an analyst in a hedge fund, you won't earn as much as a portfolio manager, but you will earn enough.
Nishant Shah has been a hedge fund analyst in Hong Kong for just over four years, working for both Millennium and Point72. Before that, he spent four years working in research for Macquarie. Aged 35, he is now in a position to work a lot less.
Writing on LinkedIn, Shah said he is a proponent of FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early), a movement in which individuals save and invest as much of their salary and bonus as possible with a view to giving up work before they get too old.
Shah attributed his ability to retire to a combination of luck and "generous bosses." At Millennium he was as senior long/short equities analyst in a pod run by senior portfolio manager Alex Chau. Chau also worked for Point72 previously, and it's not clear whether he was Shah's boss there too. Shah described Chau as, "one of the sharpest minds, fairest supervisors and humblest personalities I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing & working with."
Analysts in hedge funds provide investment ideas to portfolio managers and are paid when those ideas are implemented and profitable. Some portfolio managers are more generous to their analysts than others. Writing last year, one hedge fund analyst complained of being paid terribly after working 80-hour weeks.
Chau was clearly more generous than this. Shah said he will now be pursuing "philanthropic passion projects." However, he's not giving up work entirely: after having some time off, he says he will help his friend build an investment firm in India instead.
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